With the present day proliferation of exceedingly high-volume databases, there is an increased desire toward automation of routine functions in the retrieval and handling of large volumes of data. This is especially the case in the work of financial institutions whereby thousands of documents such as checks, deposit slips, remittance information forms, etc. must be checked, sorted, corrected, totalled and returned to other financial institutions and where monthly statements must be prepared for individual checking accounts of thousands of customers.
While previously many financial and banking institutions were forced to maintain large staffs of people to manually handle the tedious document processing procedures, it was found efficient to provide means whereby large groups of specific amounts of data could be retrieved and printed, such as that required by a banking institutions, which found it necessary to provide hundreds of thousands of bank statements each month to its customer base.
The patent applications hereinbefore listed as relating to storage and retrieval systems for document images and document data items are one example where highly automated systems were provided in order to record documents and turn them into electronic images which could be stored on magnetic disk media and retrieved at a very high rate of speed. Further, these patent applications indicated how work stations could be integrated into such systems whereby system operators could quickly and easily retrieve image data regarding the documents which were placed into the system.
It should be understood that these hereinbefore listed patent applications are to be considered as incorporated by reference in the supplying of vital information and background material to the subject matter of this instant application.